M42 Orion Nebula

This is my first post about a specific target. It is one of the most photographed targets in the night sky due to it’s relative ease to make it look good!

The image you see above is my current best image of Orion but in this post I am going to go through my progress with this stunning part of the night sky, starting with my very first attempt some 2 or 3 years ago.

Picture saved with settings applied.

As you can see my first attempt lacked somewhat in detail and colour and pretty much everything!

It was good to give it a go though, I was just very limited due to the telescope not having a tracking mount so I could only take fairly short exposures resulting in this image being the way it is.

This is one of my first attempts from the current telescope with the tracking mount but before I had setup autoguiding so I was again limited on my exposure time so this image is made up of only 30 second exposures. However in total there is about 45 minutes of total exposure time

As you can see there is a lot more detail in this image and I have started to get some of the colours that are present in this nebula.

Since this image was taken I have learnt a lot more about processing these images to the point that I have started to bring out a lot more detail and colours in some of my older images like this one.

However the biggest change came when I was able to get my autoguiding to work so I can now take exposures up to 5 minutes at least! I haven’t tested to see how long I can go yet but I’m sure the time will come for that!

Now comes my current best image of the Orion nebula. This is a combination of some 10 second exposures as well as some 5 minute exposures. I think there is around 1 hour 30 minutes of images here.

I used the shorter exposures to bring out the detail of the 4 stars in the centre of the nebula and then the 5 minute exposures to bring out the colours of the gas clouds surrounding the core.

You can buy this image as a framed poster in multiple sizes, just click the link below to be taken to the secure checkout.

Or if you want this on a t-shirt, phone case, mug, mini skirt (yes a mini skirt!) and a host of other formats then you can find them on RedBubble by clicking here